Note 55 — III

Once more, don’t slip from logical into physical situations. Of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, or if it be slight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will break it down. But such collateral phenomena are not the point at issue. The point is whether the successive relations ‘on’ and ‘not-on’ can rationally (not physically) hold of the same constant terms, abstractly taken. Professor A. E. Taylor drops from logical into material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof that A, ‘as contra-distinguished from B, is not the same thing as mere A not in any way affected’ (Elements of Metaphysics, p. 145). Note the substitution, for ‘related’ of the word ‘affected,’ which begs the whole question.